Events

CHAIRPERSON

Assoc Prof Chris McMorran, Department of Japanese Studies, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

This presentation challenges the liberatory concept of “companionship” between older married couples in Japan. Men in their old age are said to become less concerned with gender relations and show more affectionate tendencies towards their wives. Retired Japanese men I observed try to transform their spousal relationship from unions based on a division of labour to bonds formed out of a romantic partnership along the lines of companionate marriage. My point of departure is that even though men are portraying themselves to be affectionate, they are dependent on their wives for their sense of legitimacy– to be liberal, needed, and morally upright. I argue that the shift toward companionate marriage ideals in retirement was the spontaneous distillation of a complex rupture of men’s economic power and shift in lifestyle and their identity; but that, once put into practice, it became another regulatory form with hidden costs for wives. The concept of oneness between spouses is born more heavily by wives than husbands. The liberal rhetoric celebrated in the companionate marriage ideals, however, masks the reproduction of these regulatory forms.

The presentation offers a workable definition of the phenomenon at play: “anxious companionship” – and I studied that with Japanese silver backpackers in Malaysia. It is anxious because it is triggered by the rupture in men’s identity after their working lives have passed. I choose to study silver backpackers because they embody the contradictory natures of the retirement projects. I chose to study them in Malaysia because the desire of retired Japanese men to be moral selves went hand in hand with the desire of the Malaysian state to make itself a moral nation. Finally, it is anxiety over companionship because it is the desire for spousal closeness that fuels the men’s transnational retirement project, and that, ultimately, brings an end to it.

Anthropology of love is one of the most dynamic and growing fields in contemporary anthropology. This presentation provides a unique contribution to this field by focusing on the forms of love that emerge in the afterlife of work. What makes the companionate marriage ideals generate such appeal in the aftermath of corporate capitalism? In changing socioeconomic moments, the forms and expressions of gendered hierarchy also shift as dependency and power may be re-created in nonfinancial forms. Even in retirement, the core structural problems of patriarchy remain unsolved, with costs to both women and men.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Shiori Shakuto is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asian Migration Cluster of the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. She obtained her PhD in Anthropology from the Australian National University. She received an inaugural ARI-FASS Manuscript Workshop Grant 2019 to develop her dissertation into a monograph, tentatively titled, “Anxious Companionship: Japanese Silver Backpackers.” This seminar paper presents some of the key arguments which had been developed as a result of the manuscript workshop.

REGISTRATION

Admission is free. We would greatly appreciate if you complete the form below to RSVP.